Puppet Playhouse

Puppet Playhouse was an American children’s television anthology series that began on December 27, 1947 airing at 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The series was then moved to a Monday through Friday schedule in September 1948. The program lasted for about an hour.

The series was produced by Roger Muir and featured the marionettes of Frank Paris, a renowned puppeteer. For the first few weeks of the program, the show began with a fifteen-minute serialized segment called Toby At The Circus, which featured Paris’ marionettes. The segment was later replaced with The Adventures of Peter Pixie, which debuted on June 19, 1948.

Radio personality Robert E. Smith hosted the program along with his puppet co-host Howdy Doody, who was a dim-witted, Mortimer Snerd-like, cowboy (Howdy debuted as a voice he did on Triple B Ranch; a radio show). When Howdy was introduced during the first program, it was revealed that he was hiding in the desk drawer due to him being too shy. In reality, there wasn’t enough time to finish the marionette, so Smith had to improvise. Another thing is that because Smith wasn’t a puppeteer, he had to voice Howdy off-camera and sometimes he had to prerecord his lines. He also narrated various silent films, which were heavily featured on the show and hosted a quiz show segment where he was seated in between two groups of children.

The program did not originally have a sponsor and in order to find out how many children watched the program, NBC offered buttons about Howdy Doody’s presidential campaign to children who wrote in letters to the show. More than 250,000 children wrote in and due to the success of the fictitious campaign, toymakers began offering to manufacture a Howdy Doody doll. However due to Frank Paris being the person who built the marionette, he demanded royalties for merchandise. Executives tried explaining to him that Smith owned the rights to the Howdy Doody name, but Paris didn’t listen and threatened to leave the program entirely. Eventually, a compromise was made, because NBC feared cancellation of the program, with Smith receiving royalties for the name and Paris receiving royalties for the design of the doll. Months later in November 1948, Howdy won his fictional presidential campaign against the mysterious candidate, Mr. X, who was revealed to be series regular Peter Pixie, who soon became one of Howdy’s closest friends. During Christmas of that same year, Effanbee’s Howdy Doody doll was one of the most popular gifts of 1948. This led to the company becoming the sponsor of the show.

Starting in May of 1948, many episodes of Puppet Playhouse revolved around the wacky hijinks of puppet host Howdy Doody, Bob Smith, and mischievous clown Clarabell because of the increasing popularity of the show. Also, during this time, the famous peanut gallery was added to show. However, after he slowly began to gain creative control sometime in which started sometime November 1950, Paris had many clashes with the cast and crew of the program. He criticized the show for being “dumbed down” and wanted the show to put more emphasis on other puppet characters and not just Howdy. He rewrote many scripts in order to make his ideal vision of the show, which caused the departure of some cast and members such as Bob Keeshan, whose character Clarabell was removed from various scripts simply because Paris did not like the character. His constant arguments on set led to the removal of the peanut gallery, which was replaced by a workshop set, which was used in a segment where he taught viewers how to make puppets. The Old Time Movie segment was replaced by footage that showed various forms of puppetry.

By 1952, the show focused less on Howdy Doody and focused more on puppetry as an art form. The irony is that, after the show debuted, NBC wanted to change the its name to Howdy Doody Time, but Frank Paris strongly disagreed. In late-1952, the network made a similar suggestion, but with Peter Pixie being the titular character. On Christmas Eve of that year, both Robert E. Smith and Eddie Kean felt that their roles in the show’s production had been downplayed. They decided to confront Paris about letting them have some creative control. By that point, Smith had sold the rights of the Howdy Doody name to Paris, due to the latter having more control over the show. Also, Rhoda Mann, the woman who controlled Howdy’s strings, wanted a promotion and joined the two other men along with Dayton Allen and Bill LeCornec, who voiced many characters for the past three years. Despite confronting Paris, he stated that he did not care about their involvement in production. To make matters worse, producer Roger Muir, feeling pressured, handed out pink slips to Smith and the four other members who asked for a promotion.

By 1953, Howdy simply served as a minor character who interacted with other puppet characters such as Mr. Huff and Peter Pixie. During the final 17 months of the program’s lifespan, each episode began with Paris reading a monologue about puppetry. Despite receiving critical praise at the time, the show was becoming unpopular. In September 1953, producer Roger Muir had left the show and longtime sponsor, Effanbee dropped its sponsorship due to the show not being as profitable as it once was. Executives at NBC wanted Paris to give up the rights to the program in an attempt to keep the show alive. However, Paris refused and on June 4, 1954, NBC cancelled the show for good.

A few months after the show’s cancellation, The Adventures of Peter W. Pixie premiered on WPIX and finally became its own show. The show premiered in November 1954 with one storyline revolving around Howdy Doody moving into the Pixillated Palace after his voyage Scuttle Island went horribly wrong and got shipwrecked. However, the show only lasted for six months due to lackluster reviews. As a result, Paris left the children’s television market and started doing more puppetry aimed towards adults.

After his WPIX show came to an abrupt end in 1955, Paris gave both the copyrights for Howdy Doody and his Howdy Doody marionette as a gift for Johnny Cantinelli, a then-23-year-old prop builder who worked on The Adventures of Peter W. Pixie.